A veteran conservative movement figure said today his group is launching a television ad and retail campaign in Iowa aimed at drumming up grass-roots interest in a return to the gold standard.

Jeffrey Bell, a former aide to President Ronald Reagan and conservative author, said the American Principles Project hopes to drive the issue back onto Republican presidential candidates’ agenda.

The organization conducted focus groups on the issue in the Midwest last year, and “the tea party response was astonishing.”

“If the thing bubbles up, the candidates are going to have to respond and move closer to our position, which is that the paper-based system is bankrupt, has run its course and we have to have honest money again,” he said.

Arguments over the gold standard date back more than a century, and their ideological charge is linked, in part, to the fact that making dollars convertible to gold would, in theory, limit the government’s capacity to act in the economy.

Bell complained that while some Republicans pay lip service to the idea, few seem to have really engaged it.

“It’s something like motherhood for some of the conservative candidates, but they don’t know enough about it to know what their position is,” he said.

The push comes amid a surge of national interest in what had been seen as exotic economic policies. Utah recently became the first state to recognize gold and silver U.S. Mint coins as legal tender, and more than a dozen other states are considering similar bills.

Bell’s currently in the course of an 18-stop bus tour through Iowa, which will end July 2. Gary Johnson has already stopped by, and Bell said he’s had interest from four other candidates.

Texas GOP Rep. Ron Paul has long supported abolishing the Federal Reserve and establishing a gold-backed dollar, though he has stopped short of advocating a full return to the gold standard. And Herman Cain said he supports examining the idea.

“If we go back to the gold standard, it prohibits the Federal Reserve from inflating the currency like [it has] done over the past few years,” Cain told POLITICO.